Return
by Salivour
Summary: One-shot. Daxter is on the beach of Sandover and meets a stranger, who is familiar to him.


**A/N: Hi! This is just a short one-shot about Jak (as Mar) returning to Sandover to talk to his friends as they once were. Hopefully the characters are alright, and please review!**

The beach stretched out before him, pristine white sand dotted with lamps beneath jagged cliffs. The huts of Sandover in the east, spilling over onto the beach and sea as he half-remembered them. The Green Sage's hut perched out the farthest, a towering mess of wood and plants, sat on an awkward pinnacle of rock. He had been a part of this world, years before. Now it was a half-forgotten dream that twisted from his memory until he was no longer a part of it.

He certainly did not look a part of this world. His tanned skin fit in well enough, the blonde hair as well. But not the sharp horns twisting from his skull, not either the gun he carried slung over his back. His sharp blue eyes scanned the landscape, seemingly older than the rest of him was. He was dressed like a warrior in precursor armour, over a simple blue tunic and white pants.

He was invisible at the moment, the pale, tendril-like wings behind his back twisting slightly with the effort of keeping the eco circulating around him to sustain his invisibility. He was sitting on a ledge on the cliff face, high above from reach.

Mar was here on a break from his travels, from flowing behind worlds with the ancient precursors. He had travelled for years, only half-remembering he was human in a whirling void of eco and knowledge. He certainly felt old enough. Time travelling does that to a person.

He was watching two young males explore the beach below him, baiting the lurker-crabs with sticks. The younger had red hair, pushed back from his youthful face, an expression of open laugher on his face. He wore a red tunic also, laughing and shouting as he got too close to the crab's claws.

Daxter. His antics still brought a smile to his eyes after so many years. He had not seen him in years, in many ways he was now passed on, but in others he still existed. Mar sometimes wished that he could still be normal with Daxter, and not two different beings entirely.

The other was a younger version of him. The blue eyes were too bright and the smile too wide, though. It felt odd, seeing himself like that. A completely different person to what he was now, decades older, though he did not look it. This Jak was silent, though he did occasionally let out a shout of his own. He did not yet know pain, loss and still had an almost child-like view on what an adventure would be like.

Mar watched from the cliff top until the sun was setting, casting long shadows across the beach and brining a cool chill to the air as it rolled off the sea. He waited until Jak went home first, Daxter trailing behind, unwilling to return home to chores yet. Mar made himself visible and sat on a lower cliff, staring out to Mystery Island, though still keeping his wings and horns invisible, not caring to explain them yet.

Daxter was almost right beneath him before looking up and starting.

"How'd you get up there?"

As blunt in his opinion as always. Mar jumped down from the cliff and landed lightly before Daxter, he cocked to one side and a smile playing on his face.

"Daxter."

Daxter's brow furrowed in confusion. "Eh? Am I supposed to know you?"

"Not exactly. I do want to speak with you though."

Daxter eyed him suspiciously. He had every reason to. To him, a complete stranger had just appeared in front of him and apparently knew him by name. But still, leading the sheltered life of Sandover, he readily agreed, curiosity overriding all else.

"Come. We'll walk to the end of the beach."

"Ol' Green Stuff won't mind, will he? He gets kinda grumpy if I'm not back by dark."

Mar laughed quietly, "Don't mind him. I can explain."

"You sure? Kinda seems risky just getting Ol' Mossy Log to just listen to some stranger. 'specially where I'm involved. He gets real mean sometimes."

"I know him. I'm looking forward to seeing him again, after so long."

"You aren't one of those weird sage pals Samos has, are you? Though you seem kina young for that sort of thing."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

They walked in silence for a moment, walking side by side along the dusk lit beach, dotted with the flickering glow of the lamps and green eco collectors. As always, silence did not suit Daxter and he soon interrupted it with questions.

"So you are a sage? What's your name, anyway?"

Mar frowned, thinking before answering, "Not exactly. I certainly have a – shall we say an affinity – with eco, but I've never gone through the traditional sage initiation. I wouldn't know which eco to choose, to begin with. Nevermind, that I wouldn't have the patience."

"Samos said that people can only be a sage of one eco, I thought you'd be stuck with whatever one the precursors picked for you, but you gotta choice?"

"Most people don't. I've never met anyone else you could control all of them."

"All of them? You do that icky dark stuff?" Daxter yelped in surprise.

"If you mean dark eco, yes. That's the first one I picked up."

"Why the hell did you think that was a good idea."

"Call it circumstance, kid."

"Don't call me kid."

Mar's eyes flashed, "I've seen far, far more than what you can imagine. You are still a child, still sheltered from the world."

Daxter kicked at a stone grumpily, "Me and Jak have seen things."

It was odd, at the time, those things had seemed so important and grand adventures worth telling. Now, they were meaningless, barely worth remembrance.

"Have you, Daxter? You have seen a friend die, lived through pain, seen cities torn down and built up, seen your home burning?"

"I– no."

Mar sighed. Daxter would remember none of this conversation, save for a few impressions. "I do not mean to scare you, but you do still have much to learn."

They were silent again, Daxter perhaps wondering if the silence was okay to break. So Mar broke it for him.

"Continue with your questions, Daxter."

Daxter glanced sideways at him, "What's your name?"

"You did ask that question before."

"Yeah, but you didn't answer it though."

"Then, who would you say I was?"

"I dunno. Am I supposed to know you? If Ol' Green Stuff introduced us, I don't take much notice."

"I've noticed."

"So are you?"

"No."

"How am I supposed to know you, if I've never met you?"

"I never said that. I just said that Samos did not introduce us."

"Then I dunno. You're not from the village, that's for sure, and you aren't one of Samos' weird voodoo friends."

Mar sighed. He did want Daxter to come to the correct conclusion on his own, if only for his own entertainment.

"Who would you say I look like?"

"Eh? You do remind me something of that ol' geezer Samos had down here to clear out those slimy plants. He was older, though and well, different."

Mar snorted. "Thank you, Daxter. But incorrect."

They were silent again, passing round the bend where the stone monuments stood, looking out over the sea. Mar led Daxter around to the front of the first one, where age and erosion had knocked a few of the white stone pillars over, half-burying them in sand. They sat down on them, Mar kicked off his boots and sank his toes into the sand.

"Ah, I haven't seen a proper beach in years."

Daxter sat silently for a moment longer before piping up again. "You know, you do look something like my buddy Jak."

Mar's smile grew wider at that, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of the sand between his feet and the sound of the ocean crashing beside them.

"Well?" Daxter exclaimed.

"In a manner of speaking."

"So, you are? Geez, I mean, if that's true – how'd you-"

Mar held up a hand to stop Daxter for launching into a rant. "As I said, in a manner of speaking. He's not yet me, but I was once him. Years and years ago."

Daxter's eyes widened. "So, you are?" he said wonderingly.

"Close enough."

"How old are you? You look about thirty."

"I've been thirty."

"This ain't you warning me to stop you from spending a heap of time with Ol' Log-in-the-Head is it? Cos it sure sound like you've been talking to him a tad too much."

"No. He means well and is a good friend, if his delivery is not the softest."

Daxter muttered something under his breath at that description of Green Stuff.

"How'd you get, you know, all…"

"Different?"

"Yeah."

"There wasn't one event. So many different things over so many years. Things will be set in motion a month or so from now."

"Great. How are we supposed to stop it?"

"Do you want to stop it?"

"Course I do I-" Daxter faltered and waved a hand toward Samos' hut, "I like Jak as his is now."

"Enjoy the time you have left with him, okay?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The Jak you know will be gone in less than six months."

"You're here, so he doesn't die…"

"No."

"Isn't it kinda dangerous telling me this? I mean, it'll be a whatamancallit, paradox of whatever."

"No, you won't remember this conversation. A vague impression of having met someone and a touch of déjà vu perhaps, but it won't affect your actions."

"Oh. Right."

"Your next question, I suspect, will be to ask what did happen."

Daxter nodded.

"We found a warp gate and, stupidly, activated it. On the other side, I was arrested and put into prison. We had appeared in a city, almost three hundred years into the future, as we discovered later."

"Wow."

Mar shifted to get more comfortable, the years had made it easy to speak of this time, "I said that dark eco was the first sort of eco I picked up control of, though I could channel before. I was because of the two years in the place. I was the main reason I changed. Almost everything else we healing those scars, though I could never be healed into the same person I once was."

"I- two _years_?"

"Yes."

"What was I doing? Cos there's no way I'd let my buddy just rot in some jail for that long!"

"There wasn't a choice, Daxter. Two years was fast. I survived."

"I'm not going to remember this anyway, right?"

"No, you won't. This is far more for me than it is for you."

Daxter scratched behind one of his ears. "So, why'd you come?"

"Mainly to speak with you and Samos. I've been feeling nostalgic."

"Can't you just speak with the me from wherever it is you're from? I mean, I'm just getting plain confused."

"No. I haven't seen you in years. Don't worry, Daxter! How do you think I got here? I'll travel back to just after we parted and it won't seem like more than a minute to you."

"That doesn't make me feel too much better."

"Don't worry about it, it may not make you feel too much better, but when that time comes around you won't even notice."

"I know I'd like to be travelling as well."

"I did offer you to come along, you know."

"You did? Wonder why I didn't come along."

"I suspect it was because you were smitten with some girl and wanted some rest."

"Oh, that's alright then. Was she hot?"

"You do not change in that regard."

"Well?" Daxter said loudly

"In your view, yes, and a complete pain to be around."

"Oh. You don't like her."

"Obviously. I don't tend to have a lot of patience for other people, I prefer action."

The sun had slipped past the horizon, and a cold breeze was coming off of the sea, making them both shiver.

"We ought to get back."

Daxter pulled his arms around him for warmth, "Fine. But I still got more questions for you."

"You always have questions."

Daxter glared half-heartedly, "Are you going to see Jak?"

"No. Maybe a glimpse if that happens, but I don't want to risk anything more than that."

"You think he'd recognise you?"

"I don't know. Perhaps he would notice a similarity, but I don't want to it would be too odd for me and change his actions far too much."

"You said that I wouldn't remember this though."

"Yes, but it was explained to me that it's almost impossible to make yourself forget meeting yourself and what was spoken. The only way is for time to age the memories."

"Right," Daxter said in his usual way of that he really did not care for explanations. They feel in to silence once more, walking silently along the beach.

"I don't know if what I'm doing is right, sometimes," Mar mused into the silence.

"What do you mean?"

"I feel as though I'm expected to know things and do things I can't. It's as though I'm always half-way between drowning and swimming, never keeping my head above water for long. It seems as though I'm expected to be right, but I don't know if I am."

Daxter frowned; he wasn't good at this advice stuff. Though he could relate that he often expected Jak to know the way back when they wandered off or how to deal with the lurkers one of the occasional time the wandered into a couple. Jak had never seemed affected by it, but one a larger scale, he could get some sense of how that would weigh on him.

"I don't know, am I supposed to do something?"

"No, Dax. It's not your fault."

"Then, what?"

"I don't really know myself. To complain to someone that may listen."

"I'll always listen."

"Thank you, Daxter. You have been a good friend over the years. The best."

Daxter smiled at that.

"Has it really been that hard on you?"

"Yes. I feel as though I can sometimes cope with everything, that I'm in my element. I do enjoy the adventures we've had. But, at so many other times I'm too quick in temper and ready to just ignore the world."

Once again, silence reigned. Daxter had no response to that, other than vague words of comfort that even he sensed that would do very little and really mean nothing. So he started with the basic questions again, more easily asked and understood.

"Why couldn't you just tell me that your name was Jak?"

"You mean why did I just make you guess? For fun, really."

Daxter snorted, "That's the best reason?"

"Why not, did you expect some complex reason?"

"Would have made things simpler."

"Yes, but far less entertaining for my part. Rather like being content with just looking at Misty Island, rather than just heading off there."

"And how would you get there?"

"The fisherman has a speed boat, I believe."

"Oh. Oh – I'll remember that one! How'd you get it started?"

"I tell you that you won't remember this conversation and now you expect to remember some tiny detail?"

"I'll focus on it."

Mar laughed again, "Really?"

"Say, what can you do with that eco stuff?"

"I'm not going to show you everything here."

"Why not?"

"Because it would freak you out to begin with. Dark eco does not get all nice just because you have some measure of control."

"But what can you do? Show me, show me!"

"Why don't you ask Samos?"

"Why ask Ol' Log in the Head? He's boring."

"He can 'do stuff' as you say, with eco."

"But that's all boring plant stuff, do something interesting."

Mar glanced sideways at Daxter. "You know, a lot of people would consider being able to hover mid-air or being able to communicate with plants and rocks would be fairly impressive. Or has hovering oneself in the air become common now?"

Daxter shook his head. "No. But Samos does that stuff all the time. And how are we supposed to know if he can really talk to those rocks? They aren't too chatty the way I look at them."

"Probably because you are not a sage with decades of experience in communicating with the earth."

"Who'd want to do that anyway?" asked Daxter, looking thoroughly disgusted.

"Samos."

"Aaaaand?"

"Every other sage of green eco. People with an interest in history or indications of the future." Mar suggested idly.

Daxter crossed his arms and snorted. "You can't show me nothing? At all?"

Mar pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "I suppose you won't remember this anyway. So it hardly matters, expect for the hours of questions."

Daxter smiled, "That good, huh?"

Mar frowned at Daxter's smile, "I would have just shown you it if they were 'that good.'"

Daxter's smile faltered a bit, "Aw, go on!"

Mar shut his eyes and let the invisibility wear away on his horns and wings. "Happy?"

Daxter reached out to tap one of the horns, finding the solid and feeling like twisted ivory under his touch. "They're-they're real…"

Mar nodded silently.

"How'd you get them? They aren't, you know, danger- Woah!" Daxter exclaimed, spotting the pale blue-glowing wings behind Mar's back. "How in heck did I not see these? Can ya fly?"

"Any question you'd like me to answer first, Daxter?"

Daxter blinked once or twice. "Can you fly with those wings?"

"Sort of. More a glide to help me over gaps that I can't jump."

"Is that how you got up on that cliff?"

"Yeah." Mar laughed softly and flapped his wings a few times to rise into the air.

"Woah! That was cool."

"I suppose so. I've been doing it for so long now that the novelty has rather worn off."

"You don't say. How the anyone could, though." Daxter shook his head. "What else can you do?"

"I thought you seemed to be rather satisfied with the whole apparently flight thing."

"You said there was more than one thing! What those horns of yours do?"

"Nothing. Decoration. Unless I want to gouge and eye out."

Daxter faked being sick, sticking his tongue out and gagging. "I don't want to know about that. What other cool stuff can you do?"

"Invisibility. That's how I kept them," Mar jerked his head in the direction of one of his wings, "from being seen. And I won't tell you about any more. Unless you goad me enough, in which case I'll start wrecking the beach with dark eco."

Daxter was silent for a moment, seemingly torn between what to start asking questions about this time. "You can be invisible."

Mar just nodded and disappeared.

Daxter seemed unworried and just continued questioning, "So – how long this invisible thing last?"

The still-invisible Mar answered from one side, "About as long as the eco lasts, which really isn't all that long."

"Er – can you become visible again. This talking to nothing is kinda creeping me out."

"No, Daxter. We're almost at the village. I'll walk with you to Samos's Hut, but no further."

"Aw. Please?"

Mar let out a light huff. "It would attract far too much attention. And as I have said, you won't remember this anyway."

"Can I keep talking, though?"

"Since when has anything stopped you from talking?"

"I dunno. What did you mean by destroying half the beach?"

"Releasing dark eco from me. It is a fairly good weapon to attack with."

"Er – you have dark eco?"

"I've got all eco. Dark included. I don't consider myself to be a good person, really, I-"

"Jak's good!" Daxter exclaimed in shock, "I know he'd never-"

"That's not what I meant, Daxter," said Mar, cutting Daxter off, "Just that I consider myself neutral. After so long, I can see both sides on most argument. I try to be good, but I can't always do that."

"Why not?"

"It is…complicated. More that there is what everyone thinks I should do, what I can do, and what I want to do. No one can be entirely good or evil."

"I suppose," Daxter allowed. Though he could not see how his buddy Jak could ever be anything but good.

"We're here."

Daxter looked at the door to Samos's Hut and nodded, feeling a hand resting on his shoulder. He was pulled into a hug, feeling odd at being hugged by someone invisible, that was his best friend who he barely knew. Who he wouldn't remember soon.

"I have missed you, Daxter. Keep being a friend, alright."

"Alright." Daxter nodded. "Hey – er, Jak?"

He heard a noise and saw, Jak – his Jak – there, clearly asking what had taken him so long.

"Sorry, Jak buddy. I just met-" Who had he met? Wings? A seagull, perhaps? But why could he not remember? It didn't matter anyway. He would have remembered anything important, as for some reason, he gave Jak a rare hug and proceeded to annoy Samos as usual, Jak smiling at his antics.


End file.
